CHRISTINE ELLIOTTCHRISTINE ELLIOTT was Ontario’s first-ever Patient Ombudsman and has been an advocate for vulnerable people for many years. Ms. Elliott has served as a volunteer with numerous community organizations, including the Grandview Children’s Centre and Durham Mental Health Services. A lawyer by profession, she was also a noted longtime Progressive Conservative MPP (2006 to 2015) representing her home riding of Whitby-Oshawa.

ANNE GIARDINIANNE GIARDINIO.C., Q.C., is an author, board director and the 11th Chancellor of Simon Fraser University. She has published two novels, The Sad Truth About Happiness and Advice for Italian Boys. In 2016, together with her son Nicholas, Anne Giardini published Startle and Illuminate, a book of writing advice from her mother, the late Canadian author Carol Shields. Giardini has been Chair of the Vancouver International Writers Festival, and a board member of the Writers’ Trust of Canada and PEN Canada.

JAMES POLKJAMES POLK was the long time editorial director of House of Anansi Press and edited two books by Charles Taylor, as well as works by Margaret Atwood, George Grant, Northrop Frye, and many others. He holds a literature PhD and has taught at Harvard, Idaho, Ryerson and Alberta, and has written a comic novel, a stage comedy about Canadian publishing, articles, short stories, and criticism about Canadian writers and writing. As an advisor to the Ontario Ministry of Culture, he worked on grants for theatre and books, tax credits for publishers and expanded the Trillium Book Prize to include Franco Ontarian writing. He lives in Toronto.